Intensity: 🩸 🩸 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Macon Blair
It should come as no surprise, or for some of you it will come as a massive surprise, but the Toxic Avenger is a great film. Not just a fun romp at the movies, but a true-blue, brilliant piece of horror wrapped in some of the best satire seen in years!
For the uninitiated, Toxic Avenger is the brainchild of Troma Studios and the legendary Lloyd Kaufman. Beginning in 1974, Troma has turned out B-movie gore, satire, parodies, and stupidity by the boatload. While Troma has a rich history of trafficking in casual misogyny, questionable portrayals of race, and a dose or two of homophobia, it has always been a huge proponent of the underdog.
Frankly, there’s no better underdog than the Toxic Avenger. Part Hulk, part Frankenstein, and Elephant Man, the Toxic Avenger is a character lovingly beset by tragedy and confusion. Imagine if you will Homer’s Odyssey was filled with fart jokes, boobs, and puss. Greek tragedy meets bawdy stupidity.
While many will point to 1984’s low-budget schlock-fest, the Toxic Avenger is an unimpeachable, razor-sharp satire on corporate greed. By any measure, the Troma production was an amateur outing filled with corny jokes and far too much of the aforementioned casual misogyny.
The 2025 release of The Toxic Avenger marks a significant departure from the original, the cartoon, the musical, and 1989’s The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie, as well as 2000’s Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV. While it’s the fifth installment of the franchise (depending on how you’re counting), it’s really a vague retelling of the 1984 film that started it all.
The big difference? Budget.
Macon Blair (the actor from Green Room, Murder Party, and Blue Ruin) clearly had a couple of bucks to work with, and it shows. Not only was Blair blessed with an ample budget, but he was also gifted an incredible cast that included Peter Dinklage, Elijah Wood, and the exceptional Kevin Bacon.
The plot is somewhat similar to the 1984 original. This time, however, the Melvin Ferd scrawny health club janitor has been replaced by Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage), an employee at the corrupt and polluting pharmaceutical company BTH (Bi-Toxiphetamine Hydroxylate). Meanwhile, a rebel activist J.J. Doherty (Taylour Page) is working to uncover the awful things that BTH has been up to.
J.J. manages to sneak secret information to an investigative reporter, but her journalism contact gets offed by The Killer Nutz. They are a violent gang and a popular rap-rock group on BTH’s payroll. The Nuts are represented by the weird and off-putting Fritz Garbinger (Elijah Wood). The toxic waste, the corporate malfeasance, and even the city’s name, Tromaville, are all still there. The city has been cleverly recast as St. Roma’s Village, AKA Tromaville.
Gooze discovers that his work as a janitor at BTH has given him brain tumors. His lifespan has been cut to another year, tops. When he pleads for money for medical treatment from the evil MTM boss/tycoon Bob Garbiner, he is shown the door. A despondent Gooze then accidentally bumps into J.J. at the plant. The Nutz show up to kill the accidental couple. They capture Winston and toss him into a pool of goo, which creates THE TOXIC AVENGER! (Get ’em Toxie!)
The Performances in The Toxic Avenger
Aside from the frenetic editing and constant barrage of easter eggs, hysterical off-camera dialogue, and brilliantly hidden bits and pieces of satire, the film truly lives and dies with the incredible performance by Kevin Bacon as Garbinger, the head of BTH. Bacon brings pathos to a horrible and corrupt self-help guru who’s in way over his head with the mob. Garbinger cares little about the townspeople of St. Roma’s Village. He spends his days obsessing about paying off the mob, maintaining his youthful vigor, and his unfortunately small penis.
Dinklage, as Toxie, also manages to turn in an equally impressive role by leaning into the vulnerabilities of a single dad stuck in a dead-end janitorial job. Gone is Toxie’s Frankenstein-esque love story. Instead, it has been replaced by social justice, vengeance, and the need to right the wrongs of corporate creeps. Rest assured, the mop is still there.
Peter Dinklage brought the role of Winston Gooze to life with pathos and humanity. But the movie had a secret weapon. Give special credit to Luisa Guerreiro, the stunt actress who dons the Toxie Suit (The Bod). Dinklage recorded a performance for the entire film, but Blair needed a stunt person to do the action sequences. Enter Guerreiro, a veteran motion-capture performer and comedienne. She watched and shadowed Dinklage, and then re-enacted the performance under all the heavy prosthetics and costume. Bloody Disgusting has a terrific article featuring an interview with Guerreiro, who describes the process of trying to embody Dinklage, who in turn was embodying Toxie. The Oscars now have a Best Stunts Category. (It’s about time!) We hope that they remember her performance in this film.
Should you see Toxic Avenger?
I’m sure there are some of you out there who will insist on sticking with Troma’s 1984 original. Or, perhaps, one of its off-beat sequels, but I’m here to tell you that the Toxic Avenger is one of the best — if not the best — films of 2025.
The film’s brilliance lies in the incredibly tight and concise editing. No scene is wasted, and no bit of dialogue lags in any way. It’s a film that is so packed with gags that, by the time your brain gets around to processing a single gag, it will have missed two or three other gags. Most importantly, Toxic Avenger gives hope that a Troma story can be told without the more questionable elements of the 1980s. Instead, they have replaced the problematic bits with a hysterical and modern satirical approach.
Here’s to hoping that Macon Blair and others with the same mindset pick up the Troma mantle and get to work on reboots of Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, Surf Nazis Must Die, and Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. Don’t bother trying to remake Shakespeare’s Shitstorm. That film is pure perfection.
Toxic Avenger is rated R and available everywhere.